


'Se famous then, this Harry Potter?

by cruciomysoul



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Dudley and Harry reconcile, Family, Gen, Post - Deathly Hallows, Redeemed Dudley, Redeemed!Dudley, and if so i apologise, minor part, not a waste of space, perhaps some out of characterness, the oc is Dudley's son
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-04
Updated: 2014-07-04
Packaged: 2018-02-07 10:57:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1896477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cruciomysoul/pseuds/cruciomysoul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dudley wishes he'd had the guts to tell his son who his cousin was - or still is, apparently.</p>
            </blockquote>





	'Se famous then, this Harry Potter?

Michael didn't stop blabbering excitedly all the way from King's Cross Station to their home in Little Whinging, Surrey. Dudley doesn't live in No.4 Privet Drive any more; instead, he has a homely house over on Magnolia Crescent, where he resides, for the greater part of each school year, alone. From the moment his son appeared appeared out of that wretched barrier, trunk and beige speckled owl in tow, he had been a tornado of noise.

Not that Dudley minded, of course; he was just glad to have his son back in one piece. Though he supposed that many of the tales his mother had spun about that 'wretched, god forsaken castle' where according to his father they 'strung 'em up by their ruddy arseholes and bamboozled people with foolish trickery' were untrue, it still did not quell the lurching fear inside of him that perhaps his son - his only living relative, so far as he knew - was not safe at that school. Dudley still remembered the dementors, after all.

But, alas, Michael had returned unharmed. If anything, he seemed in far better health and spirits than he had been when he left at the start of September. It was now mid December, and his hair was longer, his face less gaunt than it had 3 months ago.

"You'll never guess who came to visit the school during our Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson!" Michael was practically yelling from the back seat. Without waiting for his father to respond, Michael answered his own question. "Harry Potter!  _The_ Harry Potter!"

Dudley near well slammed on the breaks. "H-Harry Potter?" He questioned, hesitantly, a nervous cough brewing up in his throat. He looked up at his rear view mirror, seeing Michael nod enthusiastically. "I see. 'se famous, then, this 'Harry Potter?'"

Michael gaped at him, as though Dudley had grew an extra head, or turned into a pig, as though these were completely unnatural considering what he had just spent a whole term leaning. "Dad!" He exclaimed, almost rising out of his seat. "'Is he famous?'" Michael mimicked, scoffing slightly. "Is he hell! He's only the one who went and defeated the bloody Dark Lord!"

"Hey!" Dudley berates him, "Language!" All former thoughts of his estranged cousin vanishing, before promptly re-appearing. "And 'Dark Lord?'" He didn't even have to pretend his interest, this time. Harry had never mentioned a 'Dark Lord'.

Michael nodded again, gravely this time. "They say he was the worst wizard to ever have existed. One of the most powerful Dark Wizards of all time. Started two wars, you know. Killed hundreds- Muggles, Purebloods, Mudbloods, everyone who disagreed with him and his ideals. Except he didn't kill Harry Potter! I've read all about him in Hogwarts: A History, and there was this new, recently published one which I can't remember the name of, but they all say exactly the same thing! How is mother and father  _both_   died to protect him, and that he was the one to vanquish the Dark Lord when he was  _just a baby!"_

If the mere mention of Harry's name earlier wasn't a big enough shock, then this certainly was. By the way Michael was talking- the sound of it all- his cousin, Harry- was a  _hero_. Someone who 'vanquished the Dark Lord', apparently. Why hadn't Harry  _told_  him this? Why hadn't his  _parents?_ _  
_

"But then, at age 17, he did it  _again!_ " Age seventeen, Dudley Dursley and his parents had gone into hiding with two wizards. Dudley was forbidden from asking questions. He just knew Harry wasn't going with them. Harry didn't  _want_   to go with them. But that didn't quite make sense.

"How could he vanquish someone  _twice?"_   Dudley put the car into park as he entered his driveway, getting out of the vehicle and getting Michael's trunk out of the boot of the car whilst his son carried the owl- Helga, it was called, after some founder or something. They were inside the house now, with Michael relaxing on the sofa whilst Dudley pottered about the kitchen, fixing them both some lunch.

"Well, you see, dad, the first time, Voldemort-" There was a name Dudley knew. Harry had said that the last time he'd seen him.  _'Voldemort - or Tom Riddle'_  and without thinking, Dudley just blurted it out:

"Tom Riddle." Michael paused for a moment, blinking, looking at his father through the hole in the wall, completely taken aback.

"...Yeah." He said eventually, a strangely befuddled expression on his face. Dudley tried not to recognise the striking similarities between him and his son, though his son was quite the many few pounds lighter than he had been at that age. "Dad how'd you know that-" Michael was cut off again, this time by a cracking sound right in their living room, near the door frame leading into the hallway. Dudley's head snapped around so fast he thought it was going to snap off, and Michael looked up, alert, too.

And there he was, like magic, Harry bloody Potter, the Dark Lord vanquisher himself, standing in the hall, bemused smile in place.

Harry still had that weird scar on his forehead. His black, unruly hair still covered most of it, but part of the faint, jagged line was still visible. He also still had those ridiculous round glasses, though they were no longer broken, held together by Scotch tape.

He was taller, broader. Probably taller than Dudley, now. He was, in the very basics, a man; nothing about him resembled the scrawny kid that spent eleven years in the Dursley's under-stair cupboard.

There was no softness to his face; only hardened skin, pulled tight over bones, slight creases in his brow and what seemed to Dudley to be permanent under eye shadows. He knew a thing or two about people's complexions, and Harry's was a man who had spent far too long at war.

"Is this a bad time?" Harry asked, surveying the scene. It was just Michael and Dudley. Harry didn't know why, but he'd been expecting- _more_ people here. Perhaps a wife, or siblings, or even, heaven forbid, his Aunt and Uncle.

But no. Just Dudley and Michael.

Dudley meant to swear at Harry, or throw something maybe, perhaps ask where the hell he has been these last, what, eighteen years? Why he never came back. Why that snowy white owl of his never delivered another letter, even after they returned to No. 4 Privet Drive.

"What are you doing here?" He said instead, staring at Harry, dumbly.

"Dad!" Michael sounded appalled.

"I figured I'd come check in on you," Harry explained, seemingly fighting off a grin. Dudley rounded the wall, coming into the living room himself. "Seeming as I had the delight to meet your son this term- you know, Big D, the resemblance is uncanny." Something twinkled in Harry's green eyes, and the grin was no longer being squashed down. Becoming a Dark Lord vanquisher had made him cocky.

Dudley could only grunt in response.

Michael, apparently, had been shocked into silence.

"He's nothing like I was at that age," Dudley mumbled eventually. Harry observed him, eyebrow slightly raised. Dudley wasn't meeting his eyes.

"Yeah," Harry agreed, equally subdued, "I guess he isn't."

This was just too weird for any of them, but Dudley supposed he couldn't bloody well ignore Harry, not when he was standing in the middle of his living room. God only knows he'd done enough of that when they were younger.

"Mum and Dad thought you were dead." Dudley told him, wishing it could have been anything else, but no; apparently, he's not very good at talking to people, or communicating effectively with words.

"I bet nothing made them happier." Dudley couldn't even dispute that fact. Often he had heard his father mutter about Harry, about he's 'probably gone and got himself blown up like his daft bloody parents, serves the brat right'. His mother never liked to hear him say that. Petunia never said it out loud, but Dudley was positive the loss of Harry reminded her too much of the loss of her sister, and so she had begun to mourn openly.

On more than one occasion, Dudley had awoke to find her crying in the living room, her old family photo album perched in her lap. He never told her he had seen, that he knew some of the photographs in there moved. He suspected his father never knew, either. 

"Yeah, well, it didn't make me happy." Dudley turned away from Harry then, sinking down into the arm chair in the corner, his body feeling weighty. "You can sit down," He told Harry, "If you want." Harry nodded, and took a seat on the sofa, between Michael and Helga. Helga hooted, Harry scratched her on her beak.

Michael was now taking turns between staring at his father, and staring at Harry.

"Dad..." He said eventually, slowly, turning his grey-blue eyes onto his father, "How do  _you_ know  _Harry Potter?"_  Dudley knew he didn't mean for it to sound so rude, but still, he couldn't help feeling a little offended.

But Dudley found he couldn't quite put it into words, say it out loud. In the end, Harry had to do it for him.

"He's my cousin." Dudley bowed his head in shame. Some cousin he was. He flinched when Michael shouted, the voice surprising him, but perhaps not unexpected. Someone had to shout at him sooner or later. 

"Harry Potter is your cousin and you didn't even  _tell_   me?!" Michael sounded outraged- worse than that, he sounded hurt.

"Didn't know he famous," Dudley muttered, red blush creeping up on his neck out of guilt. That wasn't the only reason he hadn't told him.

"Don't be too harsh on him, Michael," Harry chimed in, having let the bird out of her cage and stroking her feathers in his lap, "We haven't exactly spoken for eighteen years. And it's not as if Dudley can read the Quibbler."

Michael pulled a face, momentarily distracted. "You read the  _Quibbler?"_  

"What's wrong with the Quibbler?"

"Well-" Michael paused, uncertain, looking at his father. Dudley was completely lost in this conversation. He didn't know what either of those things were; he just hoped they weren't dangerous. "It's a bit ...  _weird,_  isn't it?" Harry looked genuinely surprised at this,

"Not at all! It's far more reliable the Prophet. Cheaper, too." Michael didn't look too convinced, but he didn't say any more on the subject, either.

A terse silence filled the room once more, with Dudley now looking at Harry. It took a while for Harry to look up, and when he met his stupid, green, glasses-blocked eyes, Dudley said it.

"Sorry."

Harry looked quite startled, his mouth open in a little 'o' shape, and his eyebrows raised to nearly his hair line.

"Sorry for being so horrible to you all those years. You didn't deserve it." Dudley was still looking him in the eye, as though maintaining eye contact meant more to him than his words. It probably did.

"No," Harry agreed, "I didn't."

"I realise now that I shouldn't have let dad treat you the way he did, just because- 'cos you're a, you know, you can do magic. And stuff."

"'And stuff.' Really, Big D, are you not reading Michael's letters properly? I'm sure he's probably told you almost everything he can about what he does at the school, I know Albus and James certainly have." Harry laughed, then, appreciating his own inside joke.

"Who're Albus and James?" The names were familiar to Dudley.

"My, ah, sons." Harry looked at Dudley, gauging him for a reaction. He never found one.

"You have a family?" Harry was sure it wasn't supposed to be a question, but still, that's how it sounded. He nodded, hesitantly so. "... Good."

* * *

_fin._

**Author's Note:**

> There's not enough Dudley/Harry reconciliation fics out there and it makes me quite sad.
> 
> Thank you for reading! I haven't wrote proper HP in years...


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